Slashdot Mirror
Wiring a Neighborhood?
mklencke writes "I'm part of a project that is developing a small neighborhood of about 30 houses in the Netherlands with technology, durability and ecological features in mind. We are looking at centralizing the Internet, TV, phone and radio access. Options we have come across are a central satellite dish, a central subscriber line, etc. Preferably, fiber optics will be used. However, it is very difficult to have a good overview of possibilities, and fiber optics technology is apparently very expensive to implement. Have any Slashdot readers been engaged in a similar project? Do you have hints or resources on how to go about wiring our neighborhood?"
To avoid bottlenecks and critical points of failure, I think a decentralized and redundant architecture would be more favorable. But it's only 30 homes, not a high rise office building.
As someone who wired my house when I built it, I have one MAJOR thing I would do differently. Every room should have at least two cat5 ports on the wall that run to a central box in the basement. Then all these cat5 ports can be patched together any way you please, rather than forcing them to use certain paths. This makes it so much easier to design your home network in a way that suits you rather than the way that works with what you've wired.
Motorola Canopy (wireless) can fit the bill for the Internet part. Very fast set up. High speed. Relatively cheap. Good coverage.
Don't dig. You'll probably hit a gas line anyway.
"If you want to improve, be content to be thought foolish and stupid." - Epictetus
They have both the technology and the infrastructure to set your neighborhood up with a broadband connection.
Then let the people who live there pay for their own service.
This isn't a direct answer to the question since I don't know how to best wire a neighbourhood, however if it has to be an ecological solution then less wires are good, so wireless internet access might be the way to go (depending upon how much weight ecological gets in comparison to the others). Of course you will want to wrap some good security around that.
Otherwise if you need wires then double up on the power lines for internet access instead of laying new wires.
Just a couple of quick thoughts off the top of my head.
Get tons of cat5 connections in the walls. Even if you dont get a port there, wire every foot of the wall with Cat5. Cat5 is so cheap these days, why not?
Not sure about it but try applying to some Voice-over-IP pliot project thing. When you pick up your phone it routes that call through your network, to some pbx, then out to the real world. You would have to plug in each phone, but these days, most need to be in an outlet anyway.
Also try WiFiMAX. It is this new standard that is fast and covers a large area.
my $000.00003 cents
I don't have experience in such project, but what comes to my mind is: Try not to lock out options. Buildings last long times, it-infrastructrures change. Scalability, upgradability, options. Don't choose one technology. Choose flexibility to change media later.
Your project sounds very interesting!
It should be "The Netherlands".
;-)
And I just assume everyone loves The Netherlands. Well, at least the softdrugs policy
200GB/2TB $7.95 Coupon: SAVE90DOLLAR
That doesn't sound especially ecologically friendly.
Maybe it does if you work in the Bush Administration EPA. However this is the Netherlands we're talking about. Knee jerk environmentalism in full play in Holland, ladies.
you might want to check out the PON stuff by all optic. probably a little pricy for what you are doing, but it fits the bill.
http://www.alloptic.com/
"Where ever you go, there you are"
Puns aside, The Netherlands is quite a high-tech nation. When I was working there about 15 years ago, they even had very favorable income tax rules for foreign high-tech workers (I don't know if they still do). In addition, the Dutch are well-educated, super-friendly and fun, have great beer, french fries, cheese and museums (the drugs and sex stuff is mostly for tourists). In all, Holland is a great country that would be the envy of all Americans if they ever took their heads out of the sand. Just don't make a wrong turn while driving or you might end up in another country. ;-)
- A Canadian
I work for a contruction company that did just this a few years back. We built a 700+ home retirement community in the US. We partnered with a local Cable TV/Internet provider. The cable company installed all the in-ground components (just a normal Cable TV network plant) and provided both Cable TV and Broadband Internet Access.
As far as telephone and radio - I am sure your local companies could prove helpful.
Coding my way to the next BSOD!
It's not off the shelf, but what about setting up a local area mesh using Ronja as the interconnect and some free/open source meshing software?
if you're implimenting this stuff, you need to either know it like the palm of your own hand, because you will be the one that will be called when there are problems.
from the tone of your 'ask slashdot' this isn't the case.
~/ssh slashdot.org ssh: connect to host slashdot.org port 22: too many beers
Slashdotters love the legalised prostitution.
How to wire a Dutch neighborhood:
1) Steal bicycles
2) ???
3) Profit
Whatever solution you go for, you may want to RFID the neighborhood's bicycles just to know where they get off to (aside from the canals).
A better idea would be to run all your internet connections over the local power lines. That way, you not only save a tremendous amount of money on materials, but you'll also probably be required to get it installed by professionals anyway, so it'll almost certainly get done right the first time. After that, you really only have to get your central connection working. Satellite seems like a poor choice because of the enormous latency involved. With the number of houses you're planning to hook up, I'd recommend a fractional T3 (maybe 10mbit max) unless you're a neighborhood full of bandwidth-sucking geeks, in which case, the sky's the limit ;-)
Good luck on your project, and here's to modern communcations infrastructure!
I know that in the recent past there have been articles on Hawaii, and ways that they have implemented such things. I think their community is larger, but it might be a good direction to look in, I can't seem to find a link this second, plus I am on a shaky random spot myself right now... But, I would do a google on it, cause I know they did some interesting stuff... Good luck!
There are a myriad of free software tools available for download that you can run on even a lowly 486 machine in your basement and have enough horsepower to route an entire subdivision like you are talking about.
The low cost of Linux hardware along with the generous pricing of Linux OS itself makes this type of system especially attractive. It also leaves room in the budget for things that can really make a difference in the network like extra 802.11 ports.
Go with Linux, you won't be disappointed.
'Cause he's a human being, not a leech.
The whole benelux region is evil.... In fact, it's also known as the triangle of freaky deaky evil!
Hoi, I am dutch... Get 2 ADSL accounts at xs4all or similar and use 2 linux based routers to balance traffic between the 2 lines, it will feel very fast for all that way. Use 3 if you still experience some slowness... This way it is 10 houses that share the account cost of 1 line but get's room for 3 lines... Optical lines are only at the outskirts of our main cities so that is not a viable (financial) solution coming years... I hope this helps...
I work for a local telecom, and we have several kinds of last-mile infrastructure, including both Hybrid Fiber-Coax (HFC) and Fiber To The Home (FTTH). Either way, each home gets a Residential Service Unit (RSU), which mounts on the side of the house, which separates out the fiber or coax into cable TV, Ethernet, and POTS jacks. Fiber is extremely expensive to deploy, which is due largely to the fiber transceivers. As a last-mile medium, fiber is greatly overhyped. Hybrid Fiber-Coax, which is what most cable-modem-ready cable companies have in the ground, can support any conceivable service, including voice (RF modulated or VoIP), data, and cable, all for a much lower cost. This uses "fiber to the curb", then coax the rest of the way. Especially if you're trying to design a scalable prototype, consider HFC rather than FTTH.
Speaking personally and not for my employer.
If you want the town to have their very own dedicated TV/phone/data services, that means that you're going to have to provide them.
In other words, you're going to have to start some kind of local utility company to handle all that. It won't be cheap, or easy. And, it won't be profitable, with only 30 subscribers.
In other words, don't build ANYTHING. Let everyone buy their services from the big, mean national companies that can afford it.
Unless this is a brand new construction, TV, radio, and phone are already laid.
Cable/sat/broadcast for TV, on air radio, current phone lines...
If this is a new construction, partner with the phone and cable companies. They can do it cheaper, better, longer than a one off by you.
If all you're doing is building in internet access (and possibly some of those other services (on top of), wireless or powerline delivery would seem to be your best options, Unless you personally want to support the hassles of underground fiber cables for xx years.
Go with fiber. Running fiber is cheap. The expensive part is the network equipment to go with it. But fiber is the future. You can run anything over it. And technology is used to enhance existing fiber runs, therefore your investment in fiber will last a long time.
Use VoIP across the fiber for telco.
Not sure about TV, but I'm sure someone out there has something to multiplex video and data.
Run everything to a central closet in each house and use it to do runs to every location in the house. Run CAT6+ everywhere using it for telco and PC. At least dual jack plates. Consider multiple plates in each room, especially living room. Use very high grade cabling in the home to avoid having to replace it.
You can use Asterisk for VoIP. Use something like a Catalyst 4000 for the fiber. Put each house on it's own VLAN and the telco to each house on another.
If you decide that you want to throw cable or fiber or whatever else in the ground you might end up with a pretty hip subdivision, but only for a few years.
Rather than deciding on what technology is the best for your cost situation at this time, instead realize that the costs of these technologies is rapidly changing all the time as new technologies come out.
Instead of giving advice on what technology to use now, I'd advise that you make sure you put flexible use conduits all over the neighborhood so that when you inevitably decide that whatever you're using is no longer fast enough, you can change it all. It would be pretty difficult to get everyone to agree on change if it meant digging up the whole block.
BigFiber.net
I agree. In addition to that... BORK BORK BORK.
Oh, damnit. That's a sweedish chef. Oh well, it's still funny.
BORK BORK BORK!
noone has mentioned wireless yet. Requires no house-house wiring, RF technology can be changed/upgraded in the future without having to upgrade house-house wiring like you would if say in 5 years cat10 is required for the most speed. Just swap your radio when the next 1Gbit wireless technology is here. There are several well documented neighborhood wireless projects out there.
perl -e '$_="\007/4`\cp%2,".chr(127);s/./"\"\\c$&\""/gees
Check out locustworld software it's open source however there are quite a few resellers that sell boxes with the locustworld meshap software loaded. Very nicely done mesh wireless software which is already being used quite widely in the UK and somewhat over here as well.
I suppose buying a network can be the best solution, but I think what's wanted here is how the Cable company does what it does so we can DIY. You dig?
Friends don't help friends install M$ junk.
worldlingo helps a lot, at least
Cable is free; installing it is expensive. Doubly so when you start talking about putting it in the earth.
Therefore if you end up putting wires in the ground try to future-proof it. Run at least 2 4-pair runs (cat5e or cat6). You can use one of them right away for very quick networking and the other one for phone
Then, add 4 or so strands of cheap multi-mode fiber. You don't need it today, so don't bother terminating the ends. They may come in handy down the road for cable tv/internet use.
finally a run of standard cable tv coax for cable tv needs today
Here's thought: Run CB cable to each house. Use a BNC Y adapters to split the cable at each house. Wrap the y adapters in waterproof tape. Plug in a 802.11g router into the CB cable. Since this is a closed system with proper shielding the 802.11 shouldn't have much of a distance limitation.
You could use old BNC network adapters but I figure you could better performance out of 802.11g devices. Also the cable should be pretty cheap. Especially if you get it in bulk.
You say things that offend me and I can deal with it. Can you?
I remember reading an article about DIY DSL here on slashdot a long time ago. I did a simple google search and found an article about a neighbourhood in colorado. verizon wouldn't give them DSL, so they did it themselves.
here's an article about them
and this is the Ruby Ranch Internet Cooperative
i know there's also software that can do DSL with nothing but an old soundcard and two copper wires. i don't know where it is, or if it's still maintained though.
cheers, and good luck.
If you can scrape up the capital, I'd strongly recommend looking into expanding your plan significantly. Buying fiber transcievers for 30 connections is expensive, but getting enough for 10,000 would be a fraction as much per unit. The economies of scale involved are staggering. Even if you have to at least temporarily set up a separate CO for each small group of connections you'd be way ahead.
If the community is less than 500m across, and each house is relatively close to the next, just set up GBE from house to house with a 4 way GBE switch in each house. This can be done for very cheap, like $120 per house.
kay, i dont understand what you just said but i like holland, so... have a koekje! :D
This is an example of a Swedish town that has done it a couple of years ago:
http://www.bjornerback.com/tomas/mattgrand
[Dutch story]
In het noord-Zweedse plaatsje Umeå hebben een paar bewoners van de gemeenschap Måttgränd zelf het initiatief genomen tot de aanleg van een hoogwaardige 100Mb aansluiting. Eerst hebben de initiatiefnemers een deal gesloten met een kabelbedrijf en met een ISP en hebben hen ervan overtuigd een prijs te berekenen gebaseerd op 95-100 % aansluiters. De initiatiefnemers zijn vervolgens van deur tot deur gegaan en hebben de wijkbewoners ervan overtuigd dat ze mee moeten doen. Inderdaad hebben 60 van de 62 huizen ja gezegd, meer dan 95% van de inwoners dus, "because they saw it was 'The Future' standing on their doorstep". In 1999 is men begonnen met de aanleg. Sommige stukken hebben de bewoners eigenhandig gegraven.
Why not try a holiday in Nederlands this year? Come see the majestic møøse....
The starting point is to work out what you want to do ... it's nice to grab the "quick list" but without a clear spec you'll bury yourself in detail.
Communications Needs - Is there a lifeline service involved (ie, does the dialtone need to be six-nines even if the Internet access isn't?). What's the regulatory regime surrounding phones in the Netherlands? Do you want to centralise services (eg mail server, Web cache) or just access? What about power backup?
Physical layer distribution - what's the tradeoff between wireless, fibre and copper? Does mobile phone coverage enter the equation?
Interconnect - you'll want phone calls to reach the outside world - have you planned for this? How do you get permission to send calls to "traditional" carriers?
Moving signals around is easy. Understanding what you want to do before you spend the money is hard...
I know how to post a link. /empaler
Fiber to home, cat5 inhouse.
Anything else, is probably not going to scale for the future.
but you are obviously an idiot.
Why not put a little free time into it and save hundreds of dollars each year, plus get a better connection?
First of all, for your telcom needs I would just put everything over power lines. I don't know about communications regulations in your neck of the woods, but there's nothing technologically stopping you from putting TV, VoIP telephone, broadband internet, and electricity over one power line at different frequencies. I mean, if you lose power you lose it all, but quite frankly if you lose power you probably don't need your TV or internet: use battery powered radio instead. That might not be feasible for a smaller project, but if you have the option it's the least intrusive.
As far as housing goes, please, oh please, concentrate on passive technologies for energy efficiency and just forget about BS like photovoltaic cells. If you want "free" energy setup a windmill farm, the technology is 100x better and cheaper. Otherwise build your houses out of nice, natural materials that are also excellent insulators like solid wood (NOT particle board), clay brick, and stone. This depends on resource availability in your area. Be sure to position windows and landscaping to maximize sunlight in the winter and minimize in the summer while using building materials that absorb heat like slate floors for the winter-facing windows. Vigilantly minimize insulation leaks and setup a regular inspection schedule once every year or few. Also be sure to allow for good airflow during the summer and try to design the house so that hot air will flow out of the house and pull in cooler air from something like earth tubes in the ground.
Think creatively in your house design if you want to maximize energy efficiency. Also don't forget what's ecologically friendly is also friendly for the people living inside!
Also, you may want to consider purchasing a fuel cell generator (or more) that is owned and maintained by the community. These are highly reliable and keep your community out of the hands of greedy power monopolies that rely on high-energy sources of power that create lots of pollution and are extremely inefficient in down converting energy from what you'd get in a power plant to what you use in your home.
Hello is de Nederlandse kerel ^_ ^ u interessant in het kopen van
geassorteerde plakken van bacon. Geloof me, de smaak is unsurpassable!!! ^_^
gee, i wonder why someone else didn't think of that.
1st off this would much more effective if you could give a picture with a general layout of the area.
if its anything like my neighborhood , i would stick the most powerful wireless routers i could find in the light poles that line the streets, hardwire them to a central location and have a dedicated t3 line run from you local phone company. this way once a better wireless tech comes out just replace these routers and your good to go. you might also look into a dsl / cable modem as a backup if your main line goes down. i know its not a superfast backup but it would be better than nothing.
I've been involved in two projects over the last 10+ years where we stubbed in fiber for new construction projects. It was never used in either case.
I'd suggest running two or three sets of Cat 6 cable to each building. That should be more than enough for the forseeable future, and only a small price premium over Cat 5. After all, most of the cost will be labor.
But run the cable in a buried, oversized PVC raceway. Then, if you need to run fibre, or anything else in the future it will be easy to do.
If possible, plan the wiring system so that new or upgraded cabling can be run to the units in future. Plan for conduit with access and pull points, or an accessible wiring tray in attic, etc.
As a start, I would run to each residence:
1- phone quad cable (plain ole phone system)
1- CAT 5 or 6 (data, local network, internet)
1- Coax (RG-59) for cable TV
If budget allows or if the wiring can't be later accessed for service, I would run 2 of each for redundancy.
I don't think the current wireless neighbourhood solutions are worth the hassle or as reliable or secure as wire. Wire will give better service longer.
I personally don't think data over powerlines will be very successful until all AC-powered equipment is built or modified to not load the data, or generate noise at the data frequencies.
By InterTran
Ow , we The Dutch one's wonted ranch engaged today , think about I. ^_^ And to sometimes ranch irritation within take , will I sometimes within the Dutch picket hehe. Within everyone case , it is one wholly twaddle , specially when yours one fiberglass avenue upon wilt tell throw. When this yonder yet not is situated , then will yours probably one team with graafmachine will get together to yours hawser within throw. it is possibly one better opinion , until resident at least , to one SDSL rope within take. Provide that the infrastructure yet present is for this. TV , wireless and phone will inconvenient turn. I have the sentiment who the KPN inconvenient will travel take when yours themselves one power station wilt travel runnen. And then yet , I take upon who TV , wireless and phone yet potential one's? Zoning , then pitcher this yet one expensive joke turn. Possibly who the potential is to everything via one fiberglass rope within tell walk , solely whether the KPN and the local TV - rancher yonder pleased with will one's.
Because that still requires wiring the neighbourhood. That is to say, the problem is not solved. :-)
Karma: It's all a bunch of tree-huggin' hippy crap!
That's easy for you to say.
It's different matter if the residential area includes some public space or it's just completely private. If it's private, probably you should build an infrastructure of conduits and pipes, and a central location for telco operators to connect. Your infrastructure should provide some space for private owned cables (LAN, etc) and some different pipe for telco company cabling. You could probably make an agreement with them to pay part of the cost. If public, you probably can't or shouldn't build anything, just use wireless for local networking.
Ik nood gronden, gronden voor wanden
Hmm, you do realise that Canadians are Americans, right? Or do you just enjoy insulting yourself?
why are such long urls allowed as a user's homepage? every article ths guy posts in gets widened.
I have a followup question on this. Hopefully this isn't offtopic.
I've just bought a house 10 houses down from a family member who has a Cable internet connection, and wifi in the house.
Obviously, I'm out of range at 10 houses down. Does anyone know of a cheap and easy way to extend that range down a bit so that I can share the same internet connection?
Due to a curve in the street and some trees, I don't have "Line of sight". The distance is less than 100 meters.
Thanks for any advice..
-- -- Warning. Do not stare directly at the sun.
You mean freedom fries right?
I would recommend against wireless: while it may seem attractive, you will not be able to deliver the quality of TV service that people expect over most wireless systems. Wireless is still pretty expensive (for commercial-grade kit) and it's not very mature.
"He who would learn astronomy, and other recondite arts, let him go elsewhere. " -- John Calvin, commenting on Genesis 1
Preferably, fiber optics will be used. However, it is very difficult to have a good overview of possibilities, and fiber optics technology is apparently very expensive to implement.
i .com/fsoalliance/
You can ditch the fiber but keep the optics. Free Space Optics (FSO) has been around for a long time. Despite being somewhat obscure, it is a very mature technology with a lot of things going for it. It provides fiber level bandwidth without the cost of digging up the ground to lay down fiber. Rapid deployment and high mobility can save not only money but time as well. You didn't mention how far apart the residences are in the neighborhood, but unless you're rural and very spread out, FSO may perform satisfactorily with allowance for bad weather. Bad weather being fog and scintillation.
Fog is a problem if you're near the coast or a large body of water that can produce a lot of mist. A heavy mist can really hammer the signal by several dBs over long distances on the order of a mile/kilometer. Currently it is the largest obstacle faced by permament/semi-permanent FSO implementations. Atmospheric scintillation is the phenomenon that makes stars twinkle at night. It is caused by variations in atmospheric temperature that change the index of refraction an optical signal encounters as it zooms to its destination. This problem, however, is more or less solved by making the signal take parallel paths to the reciever.
you may be interested in the following companies among others.
tellaire
terabeam
fsona
airfiber
lightpointe
industry news and references:
http://www.freespaceoptics.org/
http://www.wca
Stay sentient. Don't drink bad milk.
There wasn't anything in his original post that said that Canadians weren't americans.
That being said, I'd agree that Holland is a great country. It was a lot prettier than I imagined, but I think it's a bit of a stretch to say that it "would be the envy of all Americans". The weather kind of sucks most of the year for starters.
There are lots of nice countries in the Americas, and there are lots of nice countries in Europe. Each one has something different to offer.
Interestingly, I found France to be the most wired country I've visited. EVERYTHING in France is online. It's amazing. Holland might be similar, but I never lived there.
I wish that this wiring entire neighborhoods concept would take hold in other developing countries where they are building the infrastructure right now. It doesn't cost much more to do it right at the onset. It costs a fortune to come back and do it later..
-- -- Warning. Do not stare directly at the sun.
check out the marconi ftth
it drops the tv into spectrum on the fibre, and then leave some spectrum left for voice, fm, and ethernet.
the other option is called 'SMATV', satellite master television. you run coax. you can run docsis over it for data if you want.
both should be borderline economical enough for your 30 homes if everyone chips in.
Google IT: "low power" "spread spectrum" "Line of sight" microwave
Line-of-Sight (LOS) Wireless, WiFi, 802.11x,
http://www.commweb.com/showArticle.jhtml?ar
http://www.ieee80
NOTE: Avoid using omni directional antennas, consider per-session (call, email, download,
EUROPE RACES AHEAD OF USA IN TECHNOLOGY!
This is a romantic return of technology to ITS place in our future.
http://www.zeppelinfan.de/html-seiten/de
http://www.flug-revue.rotor.com/FRheft/FRH
Aerial platforms provide an ideal way of delivering broadband communications services. They can be considered as a hybrid technology, combining the best of terrestrial and satellite delivery. High altitude platforms - either solar powered airships or planes, typically flying at 17-22km. no delay, no bad weather,
I hope this helps - OldHawk777
Unaccountable leaders are masters, and unrepresented people are slaves. How do US and EU fare?
Ok, here is my solution going from the user level to the core of your network. Infrared port on PC to Infrared Network Gateway module setup in each room (I'm not sure these exist, but work with me here). INGM has RS530 serial connection back to Cisco 6509 switch. (Make sure you put redundant Sup720's for native IPv6 switching.) If security is important you can use some KIV-19 or KG-195 bulk encryption devices on your serial connection. Oh yeah, you'll need some kind of stratum 1 clock source to injected timing into your INGM. We don't want any slips on that line. Then to connect everybody's 6509, I would run some coax and fire up some Token Ring. I have similar setup in my duplex and it works like a charm.
...specifically speaking plastic smurf tubes aka conduit. Don't debate over fiber versus twisted pair, allow for either or both.
To each home run two or three unpopulated tubes to a central wiring area (I prefer a 1st floor closet or under a stairwell, anywhere that dinky 16" space between exterior studs). This would be in addition to a separate run for power (keep away from telephone/twisted pair).
Have the houses go to a central wiring pot in the street/block, and from there a more central wiring pot and so on. When you are ready to begin offering service, push a CAT 6e cable down the tube to intitially get everyone on, say, standard 10/100 network. If VoIP isn't happening, a second CAT-5/6 will provide your phone. Later one, you can replace the switch to upgrade everyone to gigabit on the same cable. There's talk of even faster twisted pair connections so I think it's clearly the way to go. But, fast forward a few years, and suddenly everything is fiber? Well, push one of those down too.
Here's the best part...competition. If some ISP comes along as wants to offer service, lease them a tube. You get income from leasing them tubes that would otherwise be unoccupied. The ISP gets instant customers who would otherwise not pay the cost of installtion themselves or not be economically viable if the streets had to be trenched. It another ISP comes along and wants to offer service, they can too, which ultimately is what is best for the homeowner.
Where I live, we have a choice of cable TV and phone provides...which is extremely rare in most settings. As a result, we have much lower prices and better features since the two companies know they can't just shaft their customers endelessly or they will just jump ship to the other guy.
- JoeShmoe
.
-- I wonder which will go down in history as the bigger failure: the War on Drugs or the War on Filesharing
In all, Holland is a great country
No it isnt, cause Holland is not a country. Holland is a province (well 2 provinces, north and south holland), the country is the Netherlands.
Eg, Philips do _not_ have their headquarters in Holland (it's in Eindhoven, province of Limburg), the Dutch TT is _not_ in Holland (it's in Drenthe), Utrecht is _not_ in Holland, etc..
Holland => a province
the Netherlands => the country
I use Friend/Foe + mod-point modifiers as a karma/reputation system.
Self-correction:
Eindhoven, province of Limburg
Oops, Eindhoven is in north-Brabant.
I use Friend/Foe + mod-point modifiers as a karma/reputation system.
I must envy myself; I'm a Dutch American. There is a great deal we Americans need to learn from the 'live and let live' attitude of the Dutch. Well eductated and and fiendly are not the only advantages of Holland. Tall blondes that ride bicyles are more fun to watch than fat Americans riding in SUVs.
Think global, act loco
Rick at Cable System Services. www.cablesystemservices.com They're an excellent small to midsize company that could provide anything from a turnkey system down to any individual step along the way - walkout, strand draft, design, construction, and/or testing. They also do consulting and they're world wide. I used to work there (Eagan, MN)until I moved my family back east (NY) to my old stomping grounds - I helped work on a number of projects just like yours during my time there.
You might want to take a look at the Ronja project.
CAT6 is a waste of money for the vast majority of installations. Good CAT5e runs 1GE perfectly today, with 10GE already working in labs. The massive existing deployment of CAT5/CAT5e means that networking companies have a huge incentive to make future products work over it--and CAT5e is about half the cost of CAT6.
So how do you justify CAT6? How is it better than running 2 strands of CAT5e?
Less and Fewer.
If we actually had info on the physical topology of your community it would make things easier.
But, here's what I would suggest:
Each house should have multiple pairs of dry copper running to the SAME CO. You can probably use this as your physical medium for all 30+ homes, using VDSL or "HDSL T1/E1 Modems" (ADC Makes these).
I'd find cheap VDSL ethernet Bridge/modem (which is what they are anyways) setting up one in each residence, then you can find rack mount vdsl "concentrators" or chassis which mux all of these together and give you a few ethernet ports for uplink purposes. Either that or you can use use another vdsl modem on the telephone CO side and connect them all to a standard switch (a cheap cisco 3548-XL, or a bunch of cheap 16port switches uplinked to eachother).
tut systems makes these (which ived used in the setup i've descibed) http://www.videotele.com/index.cfm Note that there's actually a bunch of competition in this VDSL (last mile) market and prices are always fluctuating. I've found single tut vdsl modems (good for hundreds of feet, 1.5mbits over a pair of copper) go for 20 bucks a peice.
I would advise against 2.4ghz wireless as it sucks. Just trust me on this. Anyone who's recommending setting up a Metro LAN on this is talking out of their ass and doesn't realize how shitty this would be (i've seen it, CDMA collisions out the ass, 200pps limit for the whole friggin network, all of your traffic cleartext, one user with the right equipment can shut it down, lmr200 or 400 cable is expensive, 2.4 sucks thanks.)
Keep to the KISS rule, use cheap CAT5/6 or pre-existing infrastucture if at all possible.
ehhehe, you get +10 g33k points :D
Assuming you lay fiber/Cat6 underground, what provisions will be made for future digs?
Here in the states, before you dig anything, generally you can call a central number, and they will contact *all* the utilities to mark any underground lines.
Water, cable, power, phone. Basically, anything buried on your property.
One way or another, you'd have to be hooked into whatever similar system exists in NL. Some guy, 10 years from now, 2 owners from now, will want to install a pond, or other such excavation, and cut right through your cable.
One benefit of shared IT is the ability to provide smart water conservation and irrigation.
By tying the rain override together you can easily apply the weather forecast to the rain override and avoid unnecessary watering.
Most semi-smart irrigations use a real time rain detector which is better than nothing - but the best that can be done is actuall forecasted weather.
There may be other benefits - such as seriously secure home burglary systems (not the dial up kind that can be so easily cut off from outside the building)
AIK
As Canadians, we refer to ourselves as North Americans, but not Americans. We also do realize that people from other parts of the world use "America" to refer to different geographical/political areas. That's why it's always important to take the speaker/writer's origin into account and put yourself into their shoes. In this case, you can conclude that as a Canadian, when I said "American" I meant those who come from USA.
A lot of conflict can be avoided if only people tried harder to look at statements from the author's point-of-view and not just their own. This goes doubly so on the internet where people from all over the world meet.
Oh my... for a second I though this was about wiring your neighbors.
Diego Rey
diegoT
...hire one. Stick to what you know.
Don't believe anything I say. I crash test crack pipes for a living.
Ha ha, made you look.
Don't believe anything I say. I crash test crack pipes for a living.
How would one go about muxing radio, ip, tv and voice over one line without throwing it all onto the ip network?
If you leave a string in each run, changes are much easier. Do not use cotton, use something which won't rot.
After a lot of thinking, meeting, and planning, we decided that while we had the resources to install some sort of community network (we were looking at getting our own DSLAM and doing our our DSL installation), we didn't have a large enough subscriber base to enable us to keep such a network maintained.
Instead, we were agressive with the local cable franchise holder and are now starting to get broadband installed in our community. While having our own cable plant may have saved us a few dollars, we don't have the headaches of keeping a system up and running.
The one thing that we don't get with this approach is a private subnet for our community; something that many of us would like to have for all sorts of reasons. I've managed to get myself politically active on this issue and the next time our local cable franchise is up for renegotiation, private neighborhood subnets will be proposed and discussed.
wherever I go, there I am.
Are we supposed to comment with no known budget?
I think you should develop some kind of new wiz bang technology. That would be interesting and make another slashdot story.
We investigated Lightpointe's solution between 2 buildings at about 150 yards apart.
Bottom line... at an excess of $35K USD for a pair, we decided to dig and run fiber at a cost of about $12K.
I live in a similar sized neighborhood (24 houses) in the US. Frustrated by the lousy local cable TV internet service, I looked into getting a T1 into the neighborhood, and hooking everyone up myself.
As it turns out, the cost is not that much less than cable internet or DSL. Not counting labor, maintenance, and technical support, the cost for a wireless setup would be about $25/month per household. That sounds pretty good, but since then, DSL has arrived on the scene at $35 a month, and cable internet has both dropped in price and service improved, because of the competition. It seems like a homebrew network would still be cheaper, but it's only $10 a month cheaper. It also involves bringing all the homeowners together and getting them to agree on the plan, and doesn't count maintenanace costs. What happens if I move? Who will they call? How much will it cost? They're still enthusiastic about the idea, but I'm not sure it's so good.
Off topic, but you might want to see this - pictures of a guy eating out of the litterbox, then even worse - feeding cat litter to a baby. What is the world coming to?
Ronja. The GPL'd Free Space Optical link with the $100 price tag
I work with this product and it kicks ass http://www.spherecom.com/ I also think their is a open source product in the works. Short and sweet!
Sig: BEEeeeP,,Please press pound, so I can get on with my fucking life!
Comment removed based on user account deletion
Alot of WISPs and neighborhood networks are using Motorola Canopy. They have 2.4ghz and 5.7ghz systems. These are NOT 802.11a/b/g. I suggest giving this system some serious consideration.
Microsoft Windows runs on stress and frustration.
After you install this network is when things will get interesting. Basically, it is going to need maintance and financial care and feeding to keep going. When things break, security holes need patching, firewalls updating, someone gets their personal server slashdoted or hoggs resources, basically stuff changes. Hammering out how your going to deal with change NOW will save a LOT of pain in the future. Will there be policies and terms of use, will the updated, who updates them? What if the current sysadmin gets hit by a bus or just ups and quits. Was everything well documented when it was built, does anyone know where those things are? The REAL problems will come about after the system is up and running. Plan now for that, and honestly a lawyer to draft a "association network" agreement would be a good idea.
those Dutch can talk to their neighbours in winters when they're frozen under..
"I wish that this wiring entire neighborhoods concept would take hold in other developing countries where they are building the infrastructure right now. It doesn't cost much more to do it right at the onset. It costs a fortune to come back and do it later.."
Go grab a map. There's a reason cellphones are more popular in developing countries, than say the first or second world. The longer the distance you have to go, the more it's going to cost. First time, or second.
you can conclude that as a Canadian, when I said "American" I meant those who come from USA.
A lot of conflict can be avoided if only people tried harder to look at statements from the author's point-of-view and not just their own.
A lot more conflict would be avoided if people would stop generalizing and insinuating that every "American" has his head in the sand. Most "Americans" are just fine with the rest of the world and they do agree that there are plenty of other great countries in the world. Yes, we "Americans" are proud of our own country but that doesn't mean that we think the rest of the world is crap.
How about crossing south over the border to "America" and taking a closer look at us. Most of us are actually pretty nice people. Perhaps if more people visited "America" they'd realize that just because there is the occasional ignorant person it doesn't mean that the majority of our population is that way. I mean EVERY nation has its fanatics and idiots, you can't judge a nation of around 300 million people based on a few louder-than-average idiots, can you?
Sapere aude!
I assume that if you are seroiusly considering this that you have some experience doing this kind of work...if not, trust me, you're better off not doing it...but if you must, here are some things to consider...
You will want a way to get easy access to the cable. You will need to replace cable from time to time for what ever reason and you need some way to get in there. What you will need to do is run some kind of conduit (2 or 3 inch PVC pipe should work)...and you will need junctions to access broken connections and perform upgrades/maintenence (about one every 100 feet should work). These junctions should be big enough that you can get a hand through or stick a vaccum/blower into...the conduit will fill with water even if it is capped...
You will also need to decide what kind of cable to use...if you use Cat-5, prepare for major maintenence costs...lightning and shorts DO happen and although it will happen with anything that is in the ground, it will happen even more with copper...if you lay copper, there's some real expense here...you also have to design your conduit so that there are no sharp turns (I think about 20 degrees is the max angle that you are supposed to go with fibre)...this means that you will have to really think about your layout...lay string where you plan to dig and decide where switches will be located for each home...you will have to miss gas, water, sewer, and underground power lines when you design the network. The things to keep in mind are that string is cheap and you want a good way of maintaining the physical network or all of the money spent goes to waste.
The other concern with laying physical cable on someone's property is that while everyone might be friends now, it takes one bad neighbor to skrew your network. If someone moves into your neighbor's house and says you can't run cable on his property, then you have to redesign that portion of the network...
Now, if I've scared you away from the idea of laying physical cable, you have one more option...wireless (802.11a is probably a good technology to look into...not as many consumer electronics are using 802.11a frequencies), but you have to realize that there are limitations and repeaters are not cheap. Each house would probably need a repeater...With wireless, you also have to make sure that you follow your local laws regarding the particular technology you plan to use. Meaning that if you get a neighbor that complains that your network is interfering with their radio/TV reception, they could shut down the network. The other problem with wireless is that you get terible latency on the edges of your network...
I've actually crossed the border and lived in US for a while, on both coasts. I didn't find many nice people at all and racism was quite rampant. From personal experience of dealing with many Americans from all walks of life, I've found that most Americans do indeed have their heads stuck in the sand.
If you are serious about this, and you will have to be, there is a lot of things that you are going to have to worry about, Local standards building codes, carrier restriction Legislation etc. that you will have to be on top of before you start.
You will also need a services distribution point, one that every one in the netwrok will be comfortable with it has to be lockable and its environment managed.
I think that the wiring within the houses is out side the question, so I will assume that the wiring within the housing is not issue and that you will have a distribution point within each house.
I would probably suggest a high performance sheilded twisted pair cable. Lets go with siemons TERA solution. The sheilding reduces the amount of problems from running adjacent to high voltage cabling, and the increased performance of a 1200Mhz+ type solution will allow enough bandwith for quite a while 10+Gigabit over this cable is quite believable (2pr Gigbit is already happening with this stuff). If you run 2 or 3 of these to each house (inside p.v.c. conduit, with pits, drainage angle etc.) It would allow you with a great deal of flexability, even the sharing of pay-tv services through the use of set top boxes etc. It is my understanding that ScUTP is quite popular in europe (especially germany) so this cable would be easy to find, so installers to do it wouldn't be all that difficult either.
Just so you don't think I am a wack job with talk of strange cables beyond Cat 6, I design these things all day. And although Cat 7 and 8 aren't ratified yet the leading edge companies are putting out products that comply with the current stipulated terms. History says that those requirements get easier only, not harder.
btw, dont forget to connect the porn juke box.
First of all, I must congratulate you on your ambitions! It is too bad that more people are not interested in developing and living in intentional communities such as the one in which you are now involved. Having said that, the most important thing for you to do, before you even begin to consider the technology that you will use to deliver various forms of information and telecommunications is to define the requirements that your solution, whatever it is, will be judged against. This will require you to develop consensus with all residents on issues like ownership of the system, maintenance responsibilities, initial capital budget and on going operational expenses. Realize that 30 subscribers is probably too many to be served on an "ad hoc" basis (unless everyone is fairly technically literate and is willing to share "on-call" responsibility) and too few to warrant a dedicated 24x7 network operations center.
Given this situation, you may find it helpful to contract out some or all of the design, build, operate, and maintain phases of the project to an established ISP in the Netherlands(xs4all, as it is owned by KPN, may or may not be interested in such an arrangement, you may have more luck with smaller competitive providers - like Demon, or perhaps even larger players like Versatel or Wanadoo). Another approach may be to "rent a NOC." This is not as far fetched as it sounds, when I lived in the Netherlands a few years back, there were quite a few experienced network engineers who took on part-time or on-call projects for extra cash. If you go this route, it would actually be better to contract with people outside of the community, so that they could monitor the state of your network from an external perspective. You could contact a company like BaseN, for example, if you would like to try this approach.
As far as the design itself, you will probably find that the monthly operating expense will be higher than if each home individually subscribed to a complement of traditional services, at least in their most basic form. Of course, you will be able to offer additional services that are either prohibitively costly for individuals, or even unavailable to consumers. You can craft a set of applications that could be specifically targeted to the needs of your community (rsync'ed gentoo mirrors, community IM and location services, VoIP centrex services, and so on). These services will help form the basis of the requirements document mentioned above.
Next, I would work from the external connectivity to the distribution of those resources. I assume that Internet connectivity is important to you and your community. If this is the case, then the connectivity requirements are probably on the order of at least 4Mbps. If network availability is a major concern then this could be provided by 2 E1 lines, diversely routed from different providers, probably to different locations within your community. It is important to realize here that this implies that your community would become in effect an ISP. If you are really ambitious, you could pull a circuit into the Amsterdam Internet Exchange and attempt to find some providers willing to peer with you.
Now, to answer the question that you originally asked, there are a number of different technologies that you can use to distribute your network. As with everything else, there are tradeoffs involved; that is, there is no right answer (but many "wrong" answers). IMHO, the best tradeoffs would be found in xDSL technology for two reasons. First, it is a relatively proven and mature technology. Second, it works over just about any reasonable twisted pair technology. On the other hand, if you will be distributing television as well, you may find Euro-DOCSIS cable modem technology appealing. This will allow you to make use of the coax infrastructure that you will need to install anyway, but you may find that CMTS (cable modem termination systems) are initially mor
I've got fiber. I live in japan and it costs about 90 bucks a month here. Here's a gallery with High res images of the installation: http://blacklinux.com/pages/public/computers/bflet s/
This site is run out of my house. The fiber comes into a linux box running PPPoE. That's my IPTABLES firewall. Inside there is my web server and file server. It's fast and it's stable. This would be a great option for a network like you want, but you have to see if it's availible in your area.
I should have Previewed first! DOH!
BaseN
Amsterdam Internet Exchange
Juniper SDX
Am I the only one who is thinking meshap & meshbox [google for them] would be appropriate for this scenario?
Last I heard, a number of communities in the uk seemed to be doing fine with it, so it should work fine in Holland.
Check out the "hacked" firmware for the Linksys WRT54G. Folks have wired entire communities with $80 wireless routers and third party firmware.
http://www.sveasoft.com
Here is a 6km link using these babies.
Life is a tale told by an idiot, full of sound and fury, signifying nothing.
William Shakespeare
You ask what the best way to network a neighborhood. Why ask without telling us about the arrangement of the houses. Density is everything for determining the best answers. Needless to say this is complex question. Technologies change. Spend your money on reusable parts and skimp on expensive technically sensitive parts.
If the houses can be clustered around (100 Meters from) a neighborhood switch in a coms locker, use cat5e or better for IP and voice services. TV is cheaper on coax. This way the neighborhood can use whatever is cheapest for the BaseT IP connection. If the density of houses is lower, use Cablemodems or fiber to each house from one central coms locker. Fiber and CMTS/Cable Modems are expensive for the bandwidth.
My recommendation:
Build a coms locker for each 100Meter radius cluster of houses. Connect the lockers with a backbone of fiber and coax for TV. Connect the houses with Cat5e and coax for TV to the lockers. Lockers will need electrical power for Gigabit switches and coax-TV signal boosters. At the lockers, use IP switches to avoid sniffers, no firewalls or wifi because someone will have to maintain it. Put these burdens on the home owners. The lockers should require no maintenance and recover gracefully from power outages.
Today 100baseTX (100Mb) hardware is cheapest. Tomorrow Gigabit 1000baseT (1000Mb) hardware could be much better with future lower price. With $5 10/100Mb nics or $30 Gigabit nics on PriceWatch.com, I would go Gigabit, but all the gigabit hubs and switches are more expensive too. Gigabit switches at $75 vs. 10/100 switches at $40. Cat5e is $54 per 1000 feet (304Meters) of riser jacket. Labor is expensive, and replacing 100Mb hardware later is somewhat expensive, so go gigabit now.
Digging conduits is expensive and dangerious but much more secure and much bigger bandwidth than the alternatives. Conduit is adaptable and has long 30+ year life span. Make sure all utilites (gas, electric, telephone, cableTV, water, sewer) are documented before trenching. Use a walk-behind trencher to place conduit. Use conduit because you can add and replace low voltage wire, fibre, coax, without re-digging trenches. Running 3 Cat5e drops to each house will allow 1 cable for 4 telephone lines, 1 IP network connection, and 1 extra cable (backup, more bandwidth or telephone lines). Since the labor is the expensive part, put the spair/extra/unassigned cable in and conduit from each house to the locker.
Hanging wires from telephone poles is cheaper, but lightning, storms, political aprroval and ugliness are very big problems. Consider power over Ethernet for any 100Mb remote hubs and repeaters. I don't believe PoE will work with Gigabit, because Gigabit uses all 8 conductors where 10/100Mb uses only 4 conductors.
These conduits need to arrive in each house at a demarcation point, typically a coms panel. This coms panel is where all the homes coax and cat5 drops connect. Here is where the hubs switches and routers should be placed. Place the tv coax splitter here as well. Leviton sells a very expensive ($100) home coms panel. It is quick it that is what you want. I would rather take the time and crimp rj45 plugs on the wires so that they go straight into the home network switches. If you have the money and less time, buy a 110 punch down block and buy your patch cables for connecting blocks to the home network switch.
Home network security is very important. Use a firewall appliance to connect your conduit datapipe to your home network at your coms panel. Unfortunately there is not a gigabit version of the D-link Di-604 10/100 broadband router/firewall. This makes it more difficult to secure each homes gigabit data network economically. Centralized neighborhood security is expensive and t
He is in the Netherlands (Europe).
We have some different standards and situations here.
For example, telephone poles are out of the question. The distances are probably small (dense country).
Different types of connector are normally used (IEC instead of F).
And Radio Shack moved out of here a decade ago.
> Eg, Philips do _not_ have their headquarters in Holland (it's in Eindhoven, province of Limburg)
Philips moves their HQ to Amsterdam many years ago.
I don't know if anyone said this already but I would reccomend coaxial. The cable companies in the US can pump 200+ digital cables channels over coaxial and still have enough bandwidth left for my 3Mb internet connection.
You might get away with CAT 5e for the in-house wiring, but you need to consider CAT6 or multi-mode fiber for connections between switches. I just ren into this recently:
CAT 5 - 10Mhz Ethernet
CAT 5e - 100Mhz Ethernet
CAT 6 - Gigabit Ethernet
And don't scoff at the idea of gigabit inside the dwellings, either. I saw a 5 port gigabit switch for (i think) about 89.95 (US) the other day.
If you run gigabit-capable (CAT 6 or Multi-mode Fiber) from dwellings to central switch, then the resident can put in a 10/100 switch switch with a Gigabit uplink or a regular gigabit switch. Of course, there is going to be bottle-necking at the central switch, but if you put in a few OC3's maybe no one will notice...
At any rate, this sounds like a fun project.
"The Internet is made of cats."
Banal posts are not OK. Please delete your slashdot account immediately, and refrain from posting for sixteen(16) months. At the end of your probation period you will be required to write a five paragraph essay about why you had to leave slashdot, and submit it to the editors as an article for everybody to read and comment on.
Please limit your use of the internet to no more than ninety(90) minutes per each seven(7) days.
CAIMLAS, it's time to go.
I'd buy 20 drums of Cat-5 Cable and start from there.
---- Take the Space Quiz!
Since you live in holland you probably can choose UPC as your cable povider. They offer a 3Mbit cable connection for around 100E/month. This gives you more than 1 Mbit average speed, which is enough for your needs. You can even make it redundant if you bunble it with an ADSL connection.
The thing is, I've contacted a lot of electro- and tele wiring companies. Some were absolutely clueless (we prefer coax to Cat5, because coax has much better capacity, it is more like fibre), but most just seemed to think that it wasn't a project they were interested in getting into, it seemed like they thought: "Nobody is doing this, so it is not going to happen anyway, so we don't care"...
Out of 20 wiring companies I've contacted, about half didn't respond to e-mails, and just a single company actually made a bid. The one who did make a bid seems like a good one, though.
I don't know where the project stands right now, I've pretty much left it to somebody else. But I'd really like it to be realized, because then I could have my server in the basement rather than in server-hosting...
Employee of Inrupt, Project Release Manager and Community Manager for Solid
...in our neighbourhood, also in the Netherlands. It's a little network with about 16 houses attached. There is cat5 running through the "dakgoot", (Horizontal rainpipe between the houses don't know the English word for it.) there are 2 16-port switches on each side of the street and there's a cat5 running under the street to connect the 2 switches. :P :) :)
And this is all connected to a 4Mbit ADSL account. It isn't the fastest solution you can think of ofcourse but it's more than enough for the casual surfer that checks it's email twice a week
I couldn't stand the very irritating firewall policies (No decent BitTorrenting is hell I can tell you that much.) so I got myself a Demon 8Mbit
What I reccomend by the way is that you take your internet from 2 different ISP's and preferably 2 different network supliers (A KPN and/or BBned and/or BabyXL connection.) so you always have your internet connection available
Having done this type of work for several years now, I would say that for the size of your project there are a few things you can do depending on what exactly your shooting for. I have done this same project using TRANGO wireless equipment, some people will say use Canopy by motorola but my experience with them has been they are not nearly as robust, as well supported and need more overall equipment (sync gps units)also found them to be much more buggier, but thats just my experience you will find TRANGO and CANOPY is like the COKE AND PEPSI of wireless. Another all together different approach could be DSL or Cable Modems (CopperMountain DSLAMS, Cisco UBR's 7200, google these for more info)would allow you to get away from fiber and stick with much cheaper copper, remember a few years ago the MSO's were all talking about fiber to every one's door, guess what they realized that TCO(total cost of ownership)in maintenance alone does not make it cost effective, people are always digging and damaging lines, anyway hope this helps
-VERO
-- Don't monopolize
Please make sure all the inhabitants have the option of having outside lines connected to their own homes. Whatever you hook up may or may not be the hippest thing ever 5 years from now, and people may want to do their own thing.
-- Don't overspend
Also, don't spend too much money, but do something simple. We are presumably talking 30 home PCs doing regular browsing right now. Just wire every house to a switch, share a couple (2-3) PowerADSL hookups through the simplest load-balancing router, and save the money for doing the really cool hacker project for when its time.
-- DECT
For telephony, don't even think of VOIP. You could have a single DECT switch on a few ISDN-BRI lines serve the whole thing through a few antennas. These things are cheap now, and people in NL like/have DECT phones already. These switches do still have POTS ports for people with fax machines and the like..
-- P2P
Count on these people using lots of internal bandwidth once they catch on. A CD/DVD-ripping robot makes for a great common facility that make people get together. Look at these cheap boxes to play MP3s to a stereo, or mpg/avi to TV.
Count on doing at least some user-education in the field of P2P to keep them from clogging their upstream and getting into legal trouble.
-- TiVO
As an experiment, you could get one or two of these Sat-TV-recording setups, and have people just click stuff they'd like recorded in an online TV-guide, and have them watch the stuff from the network. Regular TV then would just come in over cable/Digitenne (name for DVB-T in NL), so your service could afford to be experimental.
If you plan on having any cables running above the ground for significant use fibre optic. I don't know how much fibre optic equipment costs, but I would rather pay the price to get 1000Base-SX/LX than use 10Base-T, 100Base-TX, or 1000Base-TX, and lose everything when it gets struck by lightning. The metal shield is *EARTHED*, and guess where lightning goes.
Have a look Here, and Here
Hope it helps.
Sorry, my last comment stopped when my connection went down.
If you plan on having any cables running above the ground for significant distances use fibre optic. I don't know how much fibre optic equipment costs, but I would rather pay the price to get 1000Base-SX/LX than use 10Base-T, 100Base-TX, or 1000Base-TX, and lose everything when it gets struck by lightning. The metal shield is *EARTHED*, and guess where lightning goes.
Have a look Here, and Here
Hope it helps.
No, it should be "the Netherlands", not "The Netherlands". You don't write "The United States", do you?
How about some gooooooooooooooooolllllllllllllllllld?
---
Lousy rotten karmic retribution.
Because raving nationalism is great as long as you're not from the US, right??
Free Mac Mini Yeah, it's
www.wirelessleiden.nl
it's open access WiFi. it may slightly off-topic, but its worth a look.
Ok first off you need more details how far apart the houses are is an important fact also how concerned about security are you? Does it all have to be centeralized from one point to many or can you rebranch from one home to others? Anyway assuming 30 homes relitivly close as in a city type setting with 1/2 acre lots or less and the ability to put gear out in the field here is what I would sugest.
/24 from your carrier backup can allways be handled through NAT only for when the primary line is down. If your at all worried about speed setup a nice big web cache and force everybody through it via the router. Mail again is a decent box so it can spam and virus filter, make sure to back this box up regulary. Overall 100bfl is cheap gear in the used market for nice big switches, you can go 2km over easier to work with and cheaper multimode fiber as well.
Lots of PVC in the ground perferable angled to drain. Fiber is your best bet on the infrastructure side, it's wickedly expensive to terminate and the testing gear to do a real test is expensive. Put more fiber in then you plan on using just dont terminate it till you need it. Prep for the future and do everything over IP for the phones thats easy there are numerious VoIP PBX's and then just get a T1/E1 PRI (this may be different in the netherlands I think it's Euopean E1's there but PRI's should still be offered) thats nearly enough phone lines for every house to be making one call. Cisco 186 and 188's work well enough for a whole house but there are plently of other choices all about the same. Billing may be your issue there as without getting an overpriced software package your going to have to roll your own/get a secritary to do it for monthly billing.
IP is simple enough just flip from fiber to copper at the house those are less than 100 a unit for 100bt-100bfl. ATA188's have there own nat firewall sort of thing. With thirty houses you could do it on as little as a single public IP but ti would be nicer if you could grap a
Cable TV might be an issue simply because the boxes to flip that to and from IP are pretty commercial and if your talking about satalite dish I'm assuming a simulsat to get all the birds thats a very expensive proposition. For this it may well be worth running Coax just for simplicity's sake. If you home run everything with two peices of RG6 that would get you some room to manuver. I think quality will be a big issue here RF modulation done with anything but top grade gear looks horid and I have no idea what the status of HDTV in the Netherlands is either.
Radio well that should probably just get piped over the coax for the TV assuming you mean redistibution of local stations it's pretty simple kit just some amplifiers.
No sir I dont like it.
I did something similar several years ago for a public school district. 9 buildings, each one 1/2 mile to 3 miles apart. We didn't have much of a budget, so we looked at all existing cabling in each building and what was already coming off of the telephone poles. We got lucky, there was a cable coax line going into each building, with two channels. Channel A was used for public television, Channel B was unused. So we spent around 10K in headend equipment and a cable modem for each building, with the exception of finding a few bad taps or splitters on the poles around town, it was really quite simple to set up. You say you use satelite and phone? Figure out where your headend will be, and how each building will connect to the other. Then figure out how to get access to the headend.
for the network, you can get a switch that supports fiber interface to run your data.
for the voice, you can get a pabx that is voip capable so you can get e1 lines from your telco and distribute the phone to the end users. but better option if the telco has a direct voip network so you will not need additional equipment except for phones.
for the video and audio, it depends on the signal you are carrying, is it hdtv or sdtv resolution, you may want to coordinate with your provider to allow for a setup box that gets all the channels and distribute them digitally to the end users with each having a setup box. but this will require big bandwidth (even if you use multicast.)
special note, you may want to consider hfc to transmit all the types. you can ask your cable company to terminate a node in your neighborhood and have all household install a cable modem. from there you can split the data and voice traffic from the video and audio and centralize all data traffic into a small community datacenter.
Live your life each day as if it was your last.
I've got the job of wiring up a community of 2 locations to broadband internet and TV services. The cable company wants something to the tune of $20,000 to wire us up so the trick is to find a solution for less. Decentralizing is most certainly the key, but I found this RuralConnect technology and am seriously looking into it as my best option for getting those services out to some pretty remote locations. I'm still digging through the specs since I just came across this yesterday, so any feedback would be handy for me too.
Use rigid conduit. Flexible conduit is an absolute nightmare to pull through after the ground settles, to the point of being impossible. Use multiple 3" conduits between the home with underground vaults to serve as splice points. Place pull boxes in appropriate locations if you need to change direction. Don't forget to run mule tape through the conduits before you seal it up.
Then, lay in only what you need. Outside plant cat5 is just becoming available. With HDSL you can easily get several miles out of out. (Hell, you could easily get several miles out of cat3 & HDSL too and save a ton of money.) You'll probably want to pull RG6 coax at the same time. Leave one conduit completely empty for something to pull later. I've yet to see a viable fiber for the home.
----- obSig
If you consider satellite, make sure you investigate if lag is an issue. I remember from a class that it is about 4 tenths of a second for a satellite in a geosynchronous orbit, but I can't remember if that was up-down-up-down or just up-down. The timing was better for LEO (Low Earth Orbit) clusters because they are quite a bit closer to the earth, but this was fairly new tech at the time and my class didn't cover it.
Also remember that dish connections don't like heavy storms, and that may also be an issue, depending on area weather and emergency services that would be checked through the connection. I have both satellite and land line connections, and have never lost both during a storm (100 minute UPS helps for those power outages), but losing one or the other is not uncommon.
With that said... Run fiber through your conduit for now. It's far less vulnerable to lightning and water damage.
http://alternatives.rzero.com/
I guess it would also be the envy of all Canadians if the ever took their hed out of the sand. Wait it would be great if they also knew the difference between a country and a province.
Actually I spent my honeymoon in Victoria BC and found the people friendly, the food great, and the people pretty well educated.
I am also smart enough to know that not all Canadians are butt munches.
-An American
Don't forget that the building authority will will be involved. When wiring 30 houses together, the installation will come to their attention. You need a local expert to advise you, based on your area's regulations.
I second that opinion.